Microsoft is really making it hard not to distrust them, aren't they? We already talked about Mono and Moonlight this weekend, and now we're notified of something else. Apparently, the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, released earlier this year, installs a Firefox extension which could not be uninstalled easily (registry hacking was needed). To make matters worse, this extension came with a pretty big security hole (at least, that's what everyone says). A newer version of this extension has been pushed out in May, which can be uninstalled the proper way. As it turns out, Firefox apparently has a limitation in that extensions installed at the machine level (instead of the user level) cannot be uninstalled from within the extensions GUI.

How *can* Firefox prevent it? How can Firefox distinguish between an extension installed through the Firefox interface, and an extension installed through something writing the exact same content to disk?

I don't know? Perhaps it could have a list of installed extensions in a file that was encrypted, so that outside apps couldn't write to it? Of course, it might get corrupted, but hey... there are smarter people than me to figure these things out